The Good Life (60 page)
Authors: Gordon Merrick
He'd left the giraffe. Nanny would know he'd been there. He'd left fingerprints, footprints, blood prints all over the place. He wondered how long it would take them to come get him.
It didn't take them long. They were waiting for him at the base, and he was brought back to New York to face trial.
All the papers gave the sensational story plenty of space, but the
Daily News
featured the case on its front page and treated the story almost as its own exclusive. The Langham murder had pushed the war off the front pages. The
Daily News
printed each development as though it were serializing a book. Perry read it like that â like a book, a piece of fiction that couldn't have happened to anybody and certainly not to him.
D
AILY NEWS
October 25, 1943
AIRMAN'S HEIRESS WIFE SLAIN IN BEEKMAN PLACE HOME
October 26, 1943
SLAIN HEIRESS'S HUSBAND HELD
October 27, 1943
HUSBAND GUILTY: WIFE'S NAILS YIELD CLUE
October 30, 1943
SEXUAL TWIST CAN'T AID LANGHAM'S CASE
Perry Langham's bizarre sexual personality will not afford him an insanity defense, leading New York psychiatrists agreed yesterday. Homosexuality, discovered in the files of the Selective Service examiners and admitted by him after his arrest in Canada, does not make him insane in the slightest, the medical authorities statedâ¦
November 2, 1943
LANGHAM HAD BEEN LOVER OF SLAIN HEIRESS'S FATHER
There. It had all come out. Poor Billy was plastered all over the papers anyway.
Perry lost interest in the newspaper stories. They were a bit too familiar to hold his interest. His sense of his life having ended had taken such an unyielding grip on him that it didn't particularly touch him. Money was accepted as the motive for his actions.
What did interest him was Little Billy. He learned that Mrs. Hahn and Arlene had together taken custody of the boy, and he realized that he'd probably never see him again. Even that blow he took in his stride. Everything that had made life worth living to him had vanished in that unimaginable moment in October.
His lawyers managed somehow through a technicality to keep him out of the electric chair. He was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment, which confirmed what he already felt: It was of little importance whether he was alive or dead.
That attitude was shared by his hosts of friends, all of whom vanished. Only Timmy remained loyal and wrote affectionate letters and sent messages. The letters Perry received from his mother and sister he destroyed without reading. They should think of him as dead too.
After twenty-two years in prison, the lawyers secured Perry's release on parole in 1966. He learned later that it had been Timmy who'd hounded the lawyers for the parole. Timmy was waiting for him outside the huge gates, a youthful man in his mid forties, when Perry was released.
“What are you doing here?” Perry said, smiling as Timmy walked toward him. “Don't you know that shipboard romances don't last?”
“I know,” Timmy replied, taking the small bag from Perry's hand and, with his arm over his shoulder, leading him to his car.
On their way to Philadelphia, where Timmy had arranged for Perry to live, Timmy told him about Little Billy. His last name had been changed to Vernon just after the trial, and Billy, now twenty-three, had come into the twenty-millionâdollar fortune left him by Mrs. Hahn. He had no need of a jailbird father at this time.
When Perry died of a heart attack in Philadelphia,
The New York Times
went over the old story, in the way that Perry had hoped they wouldn't. His life â what was left of it after prison â wasn't news, but his death was.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
January 10, 1986
PERRY LANGHAM, 67,
KILLER OF HEIRESS WIFE,
DIES IN PHILADELPHIA
Perry Langham, convicted in one of the most sensational trials of the 1940s of the skying of his wife, Bettina Vernon, heiress of a New York chain store fortune, died yesterday in Philadelphia. He was 67.
Mr. Langham, who was sentenced to 35 years to life after his conviction, was released in 1966. Because of the case's tangled drama, which included elements of love, hate, jealousy, and bizarre sex practices, it attracted national attention.
Portrayed during the trial as a morally corrupt playboy, Mr. Langham met his wife through her father, who had been his “patron.”
Mr. Langham met his “patron,” Mr. William “Billy” Vernon, a respected portrait painter, in 1939 while working at the New York World's Fair as a “chair boy” who pushed wealthy sightseers around the grounds.
The Langhams were well-known in the young “café society” set of New York, where they lived what was described as a “wild life,” drinking and carousing in nightclubs until dawn. Their son, William Anthony, was a year old at the time of the tragedy. In 1954 their son, whose name had been legally changed a decade earlier to William Anthony Vernon, inherited the fortune originally intended for his mother.
Langham died in an apartment owned by Timothy R. Dillingham, where he had resided since his release from prison.
About the Author
Gordon Merrick (1916â1988) was an actor, television writer, and journalist. Merrick was one of the first authors to write about gay themes for a mass audience. He wrote fourteen books, including the beloved Peter & Charlie Trilogy.
The Lord Won't Mind
spent four months on the
New York Times
bestseller list in 1970. Merrick's posthumously published novel
The Good Life
, coauthored with his partner, Charles G. Hulse, was a bestseller as well. Merrick died in Sri Lanka.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1997 by Charles G. Hulse, Estate of Gordon Merrick
Cover design by Drew Padrutt
ISBN: 978-1-4976-6643-6
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
EBOOKS BY GORDON MERRICK
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
